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From now on I'm going to fly only
by Qantas and Air New Zealand -- but only if they extend their present policy
of moving men away from children who are travelling unaccompanied. I think it's quite right that men
should not be subjected to sitting next to a child who's probably missing his/her
parents. They'll probably have the snivels or be weepy all the way across the
Pacific and if I were forced to sit next to them I'd undoubtedly feel the
necessity to comfort them (that's if I could keep my paedophile instincts
under control). I think the two airlines are on to
a winner here. Many men travelling unaccompanied are going to want to fly
with them but the airlines could cement their advantage over their rivals by
also extending the policy to include moving men away from drunks and the morbidly
obese. Anyone who has ever sat next to a
weight-challenged (we have to be careful with our adjectives here lest we be
accused of using the F word) person will know that having someone cascading
over the armrest into your allotted portion of cattle class is infinitely
more distressing than being sat next to an upset child who wants to keep
going to the loo. And drunks are the bane of all
sober air travellers. There are a fair number of people who just cannot
resist trying to get full value for their airfare by drinking the galley dry.
Their behaviour deteriorates in direct proportion to the amount of alcohol
they've managed to persuade the flight attendants to give them. I'd be delighted to have a flight
attendant come to me and say: "I'm sorry, sir, but I'm going to have to
ask you to move seats because the person next to you is reaching a state of
complete inebriation and the airline does not want you to take advantage of
them. "We have a number of seats
down the back of the aircraft especially reserved for people like yourself --
would-be paedophiles, predatory homosexuals and men with an intolerance of
people twice as big as themselves. "Have a nice flight." I strongly suspect that the
airlines are already pondering beefing up their flight guidelines. Innocent bachelors should never be
seated to single or divorced women lest they have to fight off unwanted
advances. Muslims should all be seated
together (nowhere near the flight deck, of course) so they can be monitored
during the whole journey because we all know there are terrorists among their
numbers, just like there are men who are paedophiles. But we don't have to worry because
authorities worldwide are dealing with this problem of paedophilia in an
extremely sensitive and rational way. They are assuming all men to be
predators and acting accordingly. For instance, in New York there is
a bylaw that forbids single adults (men or women) from using public parks
that contain playgrounds. Must make life awfully difficult for solo parents
who want to take their kids to the park. Incidentally, most victims of
paedophilia are molested by relatives or close friends of the family, so kids
are actually safer travelling on an aircraft sitting next to someone they
DON'T know, but don't tell the airlines or they might change their policy. Interesting isn't it, that
statistically the airlines should be banning parents from sitting next to
their children. Perhaps it would be a good idea to
commission commercial aircraft manufacturers, such as, Boeing or British
Aerospace, to build skinny aircraft with only one seat to each row. That way
no one would have to worry about anyone else, and it would have the spin-off
benefit of making the trip to the toilets less of a battle. But if airlines really find that
an impractical solution, here's an easy one. Give two seats to an obese person
and then sit an unaccompanied child in the next seat. If the worst should happen the kid
would be two seats away and with a head-start like that should easily be able
to outrun an overweight child molester.
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